Auto Dealer Monthly Magazine is the daily operations publication serving the retail automotive industry. This automotive publication serves dealer principals, officers and general managers with the latest best practices.
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By Tom Hudson LEG A L THEY DON���T CARE! The magazine���s legal eagle doesn���t know where the CFPB is going with its recent actions regarding dealer participation, but there���s one thing he knows for sure. down the waterfall at the front of the dam. ���Stop,��� Gerard says. Kimble turns, and, facing Gerard, shouts, ���I didn���t kill my wife.��� Gerard, using words that could be the motto of the CFPB, shouts back, ���I don���t care!��� Kimble then turns and takes a pretty swan-dive down the face of the dam, escaping yet again. Tat���s the phrase that got me thinking about the bureau. When I listen to my clients complain about the CFPB���s latest activities, I can hear Dr. Kimble, playing the part of the bureau���s spokesperson, repeatedly responding, ���We don���t care.��� See, when my industry friends bemoan the fact that they���re being steamrolled by regulators when the car f nance business had little or nothing to do with the recent f nancial meltdown, the bureau says, ���We don���t care.��� When my car f nance friends complain that they never intentionally discriminate on a prohibited basis when extending credit, and that the bureau has stated that intent doesn���t matter because ���disparate impact��� is all they need, the bureau is basically saying, ���We don���t care.��� When dealers and f nance Thomas B. Hudson is a partner in the law firm of Hudson Cook LLP and the author of several widely read compliance manuals available at CounselorLibrary.com. ��Counselor Library.com 2012, all rights reserved. Based on an article from Spot Delivery. Single print publication rights only, to Auto Dealer Monthly magazine. HC# 4850-4630-0435 THudson@AutoDealerMonthly.com 46 AUTO DE ALE R MONTHLY ��� APRIL 2013 ��ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ ALASHI I��� I���m a Tommy Lee Jones fan, I admit it. Heck, I���d buy a ti ti ticket just to watch him read th th the phone directory. His recent ap appearances in ���Lincoln��� and ���E ���Emperor��� have made my movie ye ye year so far. But it was one of his earlier works that came to mind recently as I contemplated some of the stories circulating about the supervisory and enforcement actions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In the 1993 movie, ���Te Fugitive,��� Jones appeared with Harrison Ford. Ford played the part of Richard Kimble, a wealthy doctor wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife (who was really killed by a mysterious one-armed man, but you knew that). On his way to prison, Kimble escapes. Deputy Samuel Gerard, played by Jones, doggedly pursues Kimble. At one point in the f ick, Kimble gets cornered, as the ambulance he stole as a getaway vehicle gets trapped in a long tunnel that is part of a huge hydroelectric dam. Kimble slides into the drainage system underneath the road, with Gerard hot on his heels. In my favorite scene, Gerard catches up with Kimble just as the drainage tunnel he used to escape ends in a several-hundred-foot drop companies complain that the bureau���s new prohibition on ���abusive��� practices rests on a term, ���abusive,��� the bureau is unable or unwilling to def ne ��� much less say exactly what is and isn���t prohibited ��� the bureau says, ���We don���t care.��� And, f nally, when our clients tote up the cost of developing a compliance management system, hiring compliance personnel, reworking policies and procedures, preparing for and actually undergoing examinations, and object to all those costs because they result in very little beneft to consumers, the bureau all but screams, ���We don���t care.��� Te bureau���s indiference to these complaints should not be surprising. Te bureau was created to protect consumers. Tat is its legislative mandate. It makes no efort to follow an even-handed approach to the problems it f nds in the credit marketplace. It identifes those problems and sets out to protect the interests of its designated protectees: consumers. Got a problem with that? Tey don���t care.